Notes :
When should we use non-parametric tests??
 When the sample size is too small.
 When the response distribution is not normal.
The second situation can happen if the data has
outliers. In this case, statistical methods which are
based on the normality assumption breaks down and
we have to use non-parametric tests.
Important point : When the population distribution is
highly skewed, a better summary of the population is
the median rather than the mean. So, the softwares
generally tests for and forms confidence intervals of
the difference of medians of two groups.
Advantage of medians over means : Means are highly
influenced by outliers. But medians always remain
unaffected by outliers. This is why non-parametric
tests are unaffected by outliers if they are based on
the medians.
Eg :

Moreover the process of ranking itself is independent
of outliers. This is because no matter how small or
large an observation is with respect to the others, it
will still get the same rank. This is because the rank
of an observation is dependent only on its relative
position with respect to the other observations, NOT
on its absolute magnitude.
Eg :
This is another reason why non-parametric tests (like
the Wilcoxon’s test) are unaffected by outliers.

What if two observations have the same value???
If this happens it is said that the subjects (or
observations) are tied. In this case, we average the
ranks (what they would have got if they were not tied)
and assign them to the tied subjects.
Eg : Suppose we want to compare the grades of two
students based on their scores given below:
Jack Jill
70
68
72
72
70
68
63
69
65
Here the response variable is score which is
quantitative in nature. The two groups are the two
sets of exams Jack and Jill took. It is also assumed
that the exams are a random sample from all the
exams each of them took. As can be seen, there are
some similar scores. So, we have ties. Here’s how to
proceed :
 Arrange the observations (scores) from smallest
to largest.

 Rank the observations such that the smallest gets
a rank 1 and the largest gets the maximum rank .
 If there are ties, assign each observation the
average rank they would have received if there
were no ties.
In the above example, the ranking goes like this :
Scores Raw rank Final rank
63 1
65 2
68 3
68 4
69 5
70 6
70 7
72 8
72 9
**Blue correspond to Jack’s scores.
Sum of ranks
for Jack :
Sum of ranks for Jill :

Hypotheses :
H0 : Jack and Jill did equally well in the exams i.e the
(median of) the score distributions of Jack and
Jill are the same.
Ha : Jack did better than Jill i.e the (median of) the
score distribution of Jack is greater than that of
Jill.
P – value : Minitab gives the following output :
Minitab Output :
Mann-Whitney Test and CI: Jack, Jill
N Median
Jack 5 70.000
Jill 4 66.500
Point estimate for ETA1-ETA2 is 4.000
96.3 Percent CI for ETA1-ETA2 is (-0.001, 8.999)
W = 33.5
Test of ETA1 = ETA2 vs ETA1 > ETA2 is significant at 0.0250
The test is significant at 0.0236 (adjusted for ties)
* Wilcoxon test is also known as Mann-Whitney test.
Here ETA1 (ETA2) is the population median of
Jack’s (Jill’s) score.

Interpretation :
 The median score for Jack is and for Jill, it
is . This means that half of Jack’s scores
were less than 70 and half were greater than 70.
Similarly for Jill.
 The 96.3% C.I of ETA1- ETA2 barely contains 0
– so, it is likely that the difference of the
population medians of the scores (of Jack and Jill)
is i.e did better than
 The one sided p value is 0.025 < 0.05. So, we
reject the null hypotheses and conclude that the
median of the distribution of score is
higher than that of score i.e
did better than
Non-parametric methods for more than two groups.
Till now, we have learnt how to use non-parametric
tests (like Wilcoxon’s test) to compare two groups or
populations.
But in some cases, we may need to compare more
than two groups. Let us now learn a more advanced
method that would help us compare the population

distributions of several groups. This non-parametric
test is called “Kruskal Wallis test”. Suppose we need
to compare M groups on the basis of a response
variable. Now, let us go over the different steps of
this test.
I. Assumptions : Independent random samples
from each of the M groups.
II. H0: Identical population distributions for the M
groups.
Ha: At least one of the population distribution
is different.
III. In order to find the test statistic, we proceed as
follows :
 We arrange all the observations for all the
groups in increasing order of magnitude.
 We rank them up so that the lowest
observation gets rank 1 and so on.
 We take the mean rank for all the
observations. Let this be R .

 We now put the observations back into
their respective groups and take the mean
ranks for each group. Let this be i
R for
the ith
group, i = 1, 2,…,M.
The test statistic is based on the between groups
variability in the sample mean ranks and is given by :
2
1
12
( )
( 1)
m
i i
i
ks n R R
n n 
 


Here ni is the sample size for the ith
group and n is the
total sample size (all groups combined). Any
statistical software will give us this value.
Note :
 The above test statistic has an approximately
2
 distribution with (M - 1) df and the
approximation improves as we have larger
samples.
 The test statistic gives us an idea whether the
variability among the sample mean ranks is large
compared to what’s expected under the null
hypotheses (which says that the groups have
identical population distribution).

 A large value of the test statistic will thus imply
that there is a large difference between the
sample mean ranks and so the population
distribution of the groups may be different.
 Last but not the least, since the Kruskal- Wallis
test can be used when the sample sizes are small
and when the response distribution is not normal.
So, it is more versatile and widely applicable
than the ANOVA F test.
 But always remember that when the normality
assumptions are satisfied and the sample sizes
are large, it is better to use the usual t or
ANOVA tests.
IV. P-value : As usual, the p – value will be the right
tailed area above the observed test statistic under
the Chi-square (M - 1) curve
Ex: Suppose we want to compare 4 different teaching
techniques using the same teacher, same material,
and same evaluation to 4 different groups of students
assigned randomly to the 4 different teaching
methods.

Response: Grades (Quantitative)
Predictor: Teaching Method (4 categories)
The following table shows the grades for the 4
methods and the corresponding ranks in brackets.
Method 1 Method 2 Method 3 Method 4
Observations
65 (3) 75 (9) 59 (1) 94 (23)
87 (19) 69 (5.5) 78 (11) 89 (21)
73 (8) 83 (17.5) 67 (4) 80 (14)
79 (12.5) 81 (15.5) 62 (2) 88 (20)
81 (15.5) 72 (7) 83 (17.5)
69 (5.5) 79 (12.5) 76 (10)
90 (22)
Sum 63.5 89 45.5 78
Size 6 7 6 4

Let us do the Kruskal-Wallis test :
I. Assumptions :
 The response variable is grades which is
quantitative.
 The sample of students were randomly
drawn for each of the 4 groups.
II. H0: Identical population distributions of scores
for the 4 teaching methods.
Ha: At least one of the score distribution is
different than the others.
III. Test statistic : Here n = 23. So,
2
1
12
( )
( 1)
m
i i
i
ks n R R
n n 
 



IV. Since we have 4 groups, the above test statistic
will approximately have a Chi-square
distribution with df. From the Chi-square
table we conclude that the p value will be
between 0.05 and 0.1.
V. Conclusion : We reject the null hypotheses at
10% significance level but not at 5%
significance level.
So, we conclude that at least one of the score
distribution is different at the 10% level.
The MINITAB output looks like this :

Kruskal-Wallis Test: exam versus technique
technique N Median Ave Rank Z
1 6 76.00 10.6 -0.60
2 7 79.00 12.7 0.33
3 6 71.50 7.6 -1.86
4 4 88.50 19.5 2.43
Overall 23 12.0
H = 7.78 DF = 3 P = 0.051
H = 7.79 DF = 3 P = 0.051 (adjusted for ties)
* NOTE * One or more small samples
The p-value is 0.051, which indicates a significant
difference (between the score distributions for the 4
teaching methods) at 10% level of significance, not at
5% level.
Note : If the p value was very small, we could have
carried out separate Wilcoxon’s test to detect exactly
which pairs of teaching methods differ. We could
have also found the C.I for the difference between the
population medians for each pair.
Can we do ANOVA here ??
Let’s check whether the assumptions for ANOVA
have been satisfied or not :
o
Simple Random Sampling
o
Quantitative response
o
Normal Distribution of the response.
(No outliers in the samples)

o
Equal Variances of the response for the groups.
(2×Smallest S > largest)
Since all assumptions are justifiable, it seems that we
can use either the ANOVA test or the Kruskal –
Wallis Test. Let’s do an ANOVA.
One-way ANOVA: exam versus technique
Source DF SS MS F P
technique 3 712.6 237.5 3.77 0.028
Error 19 1196.6 63.0
Total 22 1909.2
S = 7.936 R-Sq = 37.32% R-Sq(adj) = 27.43%
What can we conclude from the above output?
ANOVA has a p-value of 0.028 indicating that at
least one of the population mean is different from the
others at both 5% and 10% levels of significance.
So, let us draw the individual C.Is of the population
means :
Individual 95% CIs For Mean Based on
Pooled StDev
Level N Mean StDev ------+---------+---------+---------+---
1 6 75.667 8.165 (------*-----)
2 7 78.429 7.115 (-----*------)
3 6 70.833 9.579 (------*------)
4 4 87.750 5.795 (--------*-------)
------+---------+---------+---------+---
70 80 90 100

Pooled StDev = 7.936
We can see that the 3rd
and 4th
C.Is doesnot overlap.
This means that there is a significant difference
between the population score distribution
corresponding to the and teaching methods.
Conclusions :
 Kruskal-Wallis test has a p-value = 0.051, which
indicates a significant difference at 10% level of
significance, but not at 5%. On the other hand the
ANOVA test can detect a significant difference
(between the score distributions) even at 5%
significance level. So, the ANOVA test is more
sensitive and thus, more powerful.
 When assumptions for both methods are satisfied,
we prefer the methods based on normality
assumptions since they are more efficient, i.e., tests
based on normality assumptions are more powerful
(small p-values).
 But non-parametric methods are more versatile
since they can be used in situations where the usual
parametric methods fails. So, there is a trade-off.

Non-parametric tests for Matched Pairs
1. Sign test :
Until now we had 2 or more populations and we drew
independent samples from those populations. In some
cases, we may use the same subjects for both the
treatments i.e we may have matched pairs.
E.g : Before - after treatment data where the same
variable is measured on the same individual before a
treatment and some time later after the treatment.
In this section we have exactly the same type of
problem, i.e., n pairs of observations on a quantitative
response variable (corresponding to n subjects) and
we have reason to believe that the population
distribution (of differences within each pair) may not
be normal. In such a case we will use the Sign test.
Suppose, we have n matched pairs such that for each
pair, the responses (on the two treatments) differ. Let
p be the population proportion of pairs for which a
particular treatment does better than the other. Thus
the two treatment effects will be identical if
Our test will be based on p̂ , a sample estimate of p

Assumptions : Random sample of matched pairs from
the population.
Hypotheses : H0 :
Ha :
Test statistic : z = ( p̂ - 0.5)/se
P-value : Th p –value will be the one or two tailed
areas beyond the observed values of the test statistic
under the standard normal curve.
Conclusion : If p – value < 0.05, we reject H0 o.w we
fail to reject H0.
This test is called the sign test because for each
matched pair, we analyze whether the difference
between the first and second response is positive or
negative i.e it is based on the signs of the differences.
Eg : 10 judges independently assigned a score
between 1 and 10 (10 = Very Strong) to two types of
coffee (Turkish and Columbian coffee) to decide if
Turkish coffee has a stronger taste than the
Colombian coffee. The following data were observed

Judges Ti Ci Ti – Ci Signs
1 6 4
2 8 5
3 4 5
4 9 8
5 4 1
6 7 9
7 6 2
8 5 3
9 6 7
10 8 2
Ti : score for the ith
Turkish coffee
Ci : score for the ith
Columbian coffee
Assumptions : Random sample of judges i.e random
sample of matched pairs.
Hypotheses :
H0 :
i.e Turkish and Columbian coffees are equally strong.
Ha :
i.e Turkish coffee is stronger than Columbian coffee.

Where p = population proportion of cases where
Turkish coffee got a better rank that Columbian
coffee.
Test statistic : z = ( p̂ - 0.5)/se
Now the sample proportion of cases where Turkish
coffee got a better rating was p̂ . =
Also, se =
So,
z =
P – value : Since the alternative hypotheses is one
sided, the p value will be
Conclusion : Since 0.102 > 0.05, we fail to reject H0
at significance level and conclude that it is
likely that both Turkish and Columbian coffees have
equal strengths.
But, since 0.102 ≈ 0.1, we may reject H0 at
significance level and conclude that Turkish coffee is

stronger than Columbian coffee (if we really donot
want to upset the Turks !!).